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The Great Falls Airport Authority on Tuesday took a couple of steps that set the table for a potential new commercial flight connecting Great Falls to a new city.

After the meeting, Airport Director John Faulkner said he is expecting an airline to make an announcement of a route to a new city from Great Falls, possibly by as early as next week.

He would not identify the airline or the proposed city to be served.

But Faulkner said he believes Great Falls has a shot at getting direct flights to Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Allegiant Air made announcements in January 2007 that it would fly between Great Falls and Las Vegas and in August 2008 that it was adding flights between Great Falls and Phoenix-Mesa. In February 2012, Frontier Airlines announced summer flights between Great Falls and Denver, which it has twice renewed, including flights scheduled from mid-May through August of 2014.

Airport Authority members approved two changes recommended by Faulkner:

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They made a midbudget year increase of $15,000 the airport can spend in promoting routes. That’s on top of the $200,000 already budgeted for advertising, marketing and recruitment trips to visit with airline executives.

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They expanded the incentives program that the airport can award to an airline that launches a route from Great Falls to a new city and continues it for at least 10 straight weeks.

Faulkner said the authority has set aside $100,000 for those incentives, but never spent money from the pool. He said Frontier was given other incentives when it launched its Great Falls to Denver flights but didn’t qualify for these particular incentives.

In other matters, the board:

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Approved the spending of $612,000 for the second phase of an airport master plan update that will focus on the airport terminal and other facilities. The first phase looked at runways.

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Authorized the spending of $110,000 on a tractor to improve mowing efficiency in the summer and provide more snow plowing in the winter.

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Extended the contract for the Anderson ZurMuellen accounting firm to do the airport financial audit for another three years.

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Were told by Faulkner that the airport’s revenue from restaurants and other concessions doubled in January, to $66,000, from last year.